By Kelvin Obambon
By increasing the production base in the agricultural sector, Project Grow has the potential to create wealth for farmers, and by so doing, put them on the map of prosperity, this was the view of Hon. Johnson Ebokpo, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Irrigation Development, Cross River State.
Ebokpo expressed this view while flagging off the Good Agronomic Practices (GAP) Training of Trainers for Maize and Soybeans Cultivation in Cross River State, organized by Project Grow delivery office, in partnership with Flour Mills Nigeria Plc, in Calabar on Friday.
He said the policy thrust of Project Grow was to stimulate agricultural productivity through public/private partnership framework, with the ultimate goal being the capacity development of small scale farmers to venture into commercial agricultural production.
The Commissioner emphasized that the project was tailored around the ‘People First’ mantra of the Prince Bassey Otu-led administration, adding “Project Grow is the progenitor of the word, People First. It is the direct creation of the governor.”
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He said the conceptualization of Project Grow took into cognizance the shortcomings inherent in previous agricultural development initiatives such as the Anchor Borrowers Programme, hence the project aims to breach the gap and deliver on its specific objectives.
“Project Grow is what we will use to deal with multidimensional poverty in Cross River State. This is the beginning of the journey,” Ebokpo said.
Speaking on the essence of the training, the Project Director, Denis Ikpali, said that Project Grow was targeting 100,000 farmers, hence the need for agricultural extension agents and industry experts knowledgeable in productivity.
According to him, “what we are doing today is the training of trainers. We are training some lead farmers, academics, extension agents who will in turn pass down this message to our 100,000 farmers, and even our youths who will be participating. This training will give them technical or what we call Master level training that will enable them train the farmers in the best agricultural practices and utilization of resources.”
Shedding more light on what Project Grow is all about, Ikpali explained that “Project Grow is an initiative of the governor of Cross River State, Senator Prince Bassey Edet Otu. He had mirrored some of the challenges in the agricultural space and wanted to directly address some of those issues we had identified in the agric space. One of them is the lack of financing to agro business sector. This is because of the risk aversion of financial institutions.”
“He decided to provide some support to the sector by setting up Project Grow to provide a credit guarantee of up to N30billion for farmers, service providers within the agro business space to be able to provide the financing that is needed through the financial institutions.
“Project Grow is government initiated, but it’s a co-creation project that allows development partners to come in and play their part effectively, and implement their projects. We expect the private sector to invest directly in the business backed by the government. We are also supporting the private sector with technical requirements that they need to be able to access this funding in terms of training and access to market.
“We have a strong partnership with Flour Mills. We are building partnerships with other big firms in different value chains,” he said.
The Director, however, highlighted some of the early success of Project Grow to include the 12,000 hectares of land earmarked in Odukpani local government area for farming and the digital soil mapping carried out across the state.
